Two Versions of Me
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: Garret's journals from just before the pilot through season five.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is my entry for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) It's Garret's journal, from just before season one straight on through. I'll be adding more as more episodes air...it truly is the fic that never ends! (Ok, well it might end when the show goes off the air, which might be a very long time from now) Essentially, it's sorta like the title says. It follows canon, but offers a different view on what happens in canon. Although I'm warning you now, if you thought Long Slow Burn was too angsty, do not pass go and do not collect 200 dollars, this fic's every bit as angsty as Long Slow Burn, minus the alcohol induced delusions. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own them, they do belong to Tailwind and NBC. Although I do like trying to crawl into Garret's head, it's so cozy in there...

* * *

7/19

My shrink told me writing in a diary would help me to express my feelings. I'm only doing this because I was told to. Howard all but forced me into it. I hate the diminutive man, he's so small and cocky and right. That's what I hate most about him, the fact that he's right most of the time, that no matter what he does, he's right. He told me that this'd help; odds are he'll be right about this too.

He just told me to write down whatever comes to mind first, whatever my stream of consciousness is, just let my mind wander and write it all down. Whatever happened today, what I'm feeling, what I want to be doing, what I wish I was doing, what the score of the game was, anything and everything to help me realize what I was feeling, how I reacted to some things.

So what happened today? Not a whole hell of a lot. Just another day. Wake up, go to work, come home, and go to sleep. No interesting cases, just a never ending stack of paperwork. I had jumped on the deputy chief position, I loved the pay raise, and I thought it was something that would help fix what had happened with Maggie and I. I thought it would be what would finally cure us. Save us from finally hitting the breaking point.

But it hadn't. Not all the money in the world could keep her around, she found someone else. She'd had others since we had gotten back from our honeymoon, but she'd never fallen in love with one before. If nothing else, I held a special spot for her, I was always the one that she loved. Up until now, now she had someone else to love and the one word that had hung unspoken and finally come out. She had finally filed for divorce.

Have I mentioned how much I hated this? I don't want to do this, this is not my idea of fun, this is not what I enjoy doing. This is something I'm being forced to do. Howard wants to see me make some improvement. He keeps complaining that since I've been welcomed back into bachelor hood that I'm risking my job with the way I've been drinking.

I don't drink on the job, I don't let drinking affect my job. Drinking is simply extracurricular. It gives me something to do, something to take my mind of mom, who's inches away from dying. I just wish she'd get it over with. I know it sounds horrible, but she has no clue what's going on half of the time, she had no clue who I am, who her sister is, she keeps raving about seeing my father come in all the time, and she's so close to actually dying. She's suffering, just end it already.

I don't want to have to put up with her anymore, going in there and getting that blank vacant stare. I don't want to have to put up with all the suffering. I don't want to have to put up with all of her stark raving rants about something that isn't real, never was real, never will be real. It hurts to see her like that, the woman that I had known to be so strong suddenly reduced to that.

I'm afraid of it though. I'm afraid of winding up like her. I'm afraid of loosing everything I have and not knowing it. Of the slow symptoms and suddenly not being able to do anything. I'm afraid of loosing my independence. I don't want to have to be like her, cooped up in a home all day with no clue what's going on around me; it's what I'm scared of the most. I'm not afraid of failing, I'm afraid of being like that.

If I wind up like that, I'd kill myself. But it's like that character that Alan Alda played on ER-he's afraid that if he kills himself too early he'd miss out on what little bit of time he had left, but if he waited too long he might not remember to do it. If there's one thing I'm afraid of, it's that.

I don't know if I'd ever really get up the guts to kill myself. I tried it once, when I was young, a twenty something trying to make it in the world, and failing thanks to my own vices. I tried it once and failed at it then. That's a bad feeling, when you fail at even killing yourself.

There are times I want to do it again. I might just do it again. I don't know if I would or wouldn't. I mean, I want to, I do, but I don't. I want to just get rid of all the shit that's going on, but then the responsible side of me kicks in. The side of me that wonder's who'll take care of mom, or who'll make sure all the daily grind of paperwork will get done.

And it just reminds me all the more of what I want to get away from. I should do it. No one will miss me. No one will even notice I'm gone, I'll just come into the morgue and they'll all realize that I worked there, but no one will care, no one will notice, I'd just be another statistic, another suicide, nothing more, nothing less. It's not as if I have anyone that loves me enough to care.

Howard also told me to go out and find a girlfriend. But there's no one I want. My mind keeps drifting back to dark chestnut curls and whiskey colored eyes. I had heard that she just got fired again. That she had kicked her boss in the nuts. Can't say I blamed her, really, if her boss is anything like I had heard him to be.

I still have her number on speed dial. I could call her up, tell her I wanted her back, and offer her job back. I miss her. There, see I admitted it. I miss her. There's just something about her that attracted me to her, and I miss her. She might be what I need to fix things with my life.

16893

Saw an interesting thing today. Don't date a journal, number it by the number of days you've be alive.

16893 days. 405432 hours. 24325920 minutes. 1459555200 seconds. Every second I'm closer to death. I've already got one foot in the grave, I hate this job and I swear it's going to kill me. At least I won't have far to go. All they'll have to do is scoop me out of my chair and cut me open.

16897

My mother died today. This morning. I cant' say I wasn't expecting it. I was. I've been waiting for this for almost five years, since she had finally lost all her independence. I've wanted it for five months since she had lost all traces of who she was. Now she's gone. No more pain, no more suffering.

Her sister's working on the funeral arrangements. One less thing I have to do. One less thing I have to worry about. She's gone though; I'm surprised that I don't feel anything. I feel relieved if there's anything I can feel about it. I don't feel as hurt I thought I would be. I just feel-here. As if I'm here, and that's it. Not empty, not like something is missing, I just kinda feel here.

I don't know what I want to feel. I want to feel upset. I want to feel hurt. But I can't. It's relief that I feel, she's finally gone from everything. And it gives me an excuse to get out of paperwork. I feel horrible for thinking that, but it's the truth.

16901

The funeral was today. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to step out from where I was under the coffin and give it a shove down the stairs. I wanted to dance on it as they lowered into the ground. I wanted to yell out that I was finally free from her.

But I didn't. I kept calm and quiet, did what I was supposed to do as the good grieving son. I acted the way I was supposed to. I behaved myself, and nodded at everyone who offered their condolences, not really hearing anything that they were saying.

The only thing I could think of was that I was finally free from the power that she had over me. But yet, I'm not going to give up my job, go back to what I was. Even without her all but forcing me to be what she wanted me to be, I'm still what she wanted me to be.

I became what she wanted me to once she first started showing signs that she was sick. I came back and she told me that she was never going to get better, couldn't I do something, just for her. Couldn't I be the son she wanted me to be? That she wanted to enjoy me being what I could be for as long as possible.

She never was sick, not until a few years ago, but she kept playing it up, guilting me into going to college. Guilting me into becoming a doctor. I hated her, I hated her with a passion, but yet, now that she's gone, I miss her.

It's that fucked up parent child relationship. Where no matter what you do, no matter what they do to you, you still want to love them. I know I've been a horrible father to Abby, yet she still loves me, she's been horrible to me and I still love her. I still love my father, and he's hardly even been there for me. I hate human emotion.

16903

I don't know what to think, what to feel anymore A voice in the back of my head keeps telling me to pick up the phone and call her and tell her to come back. It's not like we haven't talked before. I've called her up from time to time, just to talk. And she's done the same with me.

But it's different, asking her to come back. And it's only because of me; I want her to come back because I want her near me again. I don't know, I feel more empty without her than without my mother. I feel more empty without her than without Maggie. It took a little getting used to; going back to sleeping alone in a bed, but it's not that bad.

We don't fight anymore though, there's not the epic screaming matches over anything and everything. We don't drag Abby into to the middle of things like we used to. We're at least civil to one another. Enough to make Abby happy and whatever Maggie's boy toy du jour was happy.

But part of me wants to call her back from California and tell her to never leave again. Part of me is crying out for her, and I don't know why. I don't want to feel like this, the last time I felt like this they left me. Stuck a folder with divorce papers on my desk and told me that she found someone else, could I just put my signature to things and they would be over.

Fifteen years of marriage and it ends with a signature. I didn't even put up an argument. She'd been distant for far too long. I kept trying to make it work, but it never did. I should have given up. But I don't give up. Giving up means defeat. I gave up with Maggie though, there was nothing else I could do but give up.

16924

I haven't written in the better part of a month. Howard said he could tell and he wanted me to write more again. Not like there's anything to write about. His sock puppet that's supposed to bolster my self confidence. I don't see how a sock puppet can possibly do that, but according to the great Dr. Stiles it's supposed to.

He said it'll help with my next to nonexistent public speaking skills. The only public speaking I need to do is to give orders, I don't need to give big huge speeches. I avoid doing a presentation for the convention every year, I either don't go or am the one to set everything up.

Nigel loves those things, he usually goes and drags Bug along. I don't complain. They do a good job, that's all that matters. And I get out of going if they're the ones to go. I hate having to do big huge speeches. They serve no purpose, all they do is make you even more worked up about things that you can never care about, make you like them less.

He wants me to say what I think about Maggie leaving me, about how I'm coping with the death of my mother. I'm coping with both. I'm not doing too badly, all things considered. I'm still functioning, I don't drink that much, and my life is going for the most part, pretty well. He keeps telling me to get a girlfriend though.

And every time he does the thought of her crosses my mind. I don't love her, I can't love her, she's a friend. I don't want to love her; I don't want to have to worry about those feelings clouding my judgment on hiring her back. She did need the job. She did need to get settled down someplace.

I'll call her. I know I will.

16935

I called her today. I finally got up the nerve to call her. She sounded almost shocked to hear my voice, we haven't talked in two months, and the tone of her voice seemed to think that something had gone horribly wrong. But she sounded even more shocked when I told her she was going to get her old job back. I haven't heard her voice in far too long.

I'm lonely without her, there was just something about her. We got along so well. I miss the way that we would banter more than anything. There's no one here for me to banter with. Nigel comes closest to my sense of humor and the boy is almost afraid of me, he respects me, but too many damn years in the British navy taught him how to respect a superior, and joking with them is apparently not one of those ways.

And I don't think that Bug even has a sense of humor. I've searched far and wide for it, and it seems fairly nonexistent. Trey, well, he goes for blatant humor, sarcasm is something that he knows and recognizes but he's not like Jordan. He couldn't have an entire conversation in dry sarcasm like Jordan and I could.

She sounded overjoyed to have the job back. I could tell that she had probably started on her way out the door and home to pack. She said that she'd be back in two days. That seemed like an eternity before I would see her again. It felt far too long to see her. I haven't seen her years, and I don't know why I miss her so much, but I do.

I feel almost incomplete without her. I feel almost empty without her. I don't know why, but I do. I don't want to, but I do. I want to be perfectly happy without her, but I can't. And I don't know why it's stronger for her than it ever was for Maggie. I didn't feel this empty when she left me.

But I had known that was over before it even began. I don't even know why I asked her to marry me. She was there, I was dating her, and the sex was great. I think I just wanted proof that something in my life would be stable. I wanted to prove that I was better than my family had been, actually keep a good relationship, be there, and be a good father for any children.

But three months into the marriage and I just knew that it was over. I knew that she was seeing someone else and I didn't even try to care. It didn't hurt me, it didn't really deal a blow to my heart and soul, it hurt my ego. I wasn't enough for her. But that was the only thing that it hurt. I didn't care that she was seeing someone else, I cared that she was seeing someone else because I wasn't enough.

Once Abby was born, I thought it would help make things right between us, but I had known it was gone. She had told me once, in the heat of an argument that she had only stuck around as long as she had because she didn't want to risk having to raise a child by herself. That the only reason why she didn't run off was because she might have wound up stuck with Abby all by herself. She wanted someone else there to split the responsibility.

I had always known that she was cold, but I never realized how cold until then. I'm just grateful Abby wasn't there to hear it. Because I have to admit, I'm guilty of the same thing. The only reason why I stayed with Maggie for so long was because I didn't want to be the one to provide for Abby, I couldn't do it alone, not with how much I work. I'd never be there for her. I'm not there enough for her as it is.

But things are over between us now, for good. The only thing I miss is the wild passionate sex that we would have. They do say that angry sex is the best sex and I have to agree with them.

16937

She came back in today; she looked so much the same way that I remembered her. She had dressed up, a rarity for her. I can't remember the last time I had seen her in nice clothes. I feel bad about how much I offered her, but I was getting enough shit for hiring her back as it was, I couldn't stretch the budget anymore.

It was half of what she'd make anywhere else, but she wouldn't be hired. If nothing else, she was hot headed and brash and it got her into far too much trouble. But she was damn good at what she did, no one could deny that. No one could say that she wasn't one of the best out there.

She just needs some self-control. She needs to learn how to let the cops do their job and not go off on renegade missions trying to catch the bad guys. Leave that to the PD, they know what they're doing. She needs to just calm down a bit, not a lot, just enough to not risk her life every single case.

But I had almost forgotten how she looked. She walked in and I just felt-I don't even know how I felt. There's no real way to describe it, it's not any emotion that I know of. It felt wonderful and horrible all at once.

It's probably the way that the intake girl feels for me. As much as I try to ignore her, she keeps doing cute little things to try and show that she wants me. I've given up trying to ignore her and almost to the point of flat out turning her down. She's a coworker, and very much not my type.

But she keeps flirting with me every time she walks by me. I don't want her at all. She's too free spirited, to light, too airy, to much the "love is all around us" type. Yeah right, a match made in heaven for an old jaded cynic. She's one of those hippie types, a new age spirit and I'm, in a word, not.

9/21

I give up with the day's thing. It's too damn depressing. Each time I do the math I'm reminded of how many days closer to death I am.

She pointed out to me how much Lily keeps flirting with me, as if to tell me to go out with her. I don't want to. I don't want to date Lily. I'm not going to date Lily. I'm not. It's that simple.

We're too different, we'll never get along. We'll get along as well as me and Maggie did, which is not at all. It might be passionate, but I don't think it'll ever last. She's a coworker, she's twenty years younger than I am, and things just aren't going to work between us.

And to be frank, she just doesn't interest me. She's not bad looking, but she's not my type. She's too-it's hard to describe. I'd use round but that has a negative connotation, she's not fat, but she has curves. Too many of them. She's no larger than average, but she's busty and she has a round face.

I go for skinny, petite, almost boyish. I don't really care if a girl has boobs twice the size of her head, a nice rack is just that, nice, but it's not something that I really care about. Let's face it, Jordan is my type. More than anyone else. Even Maggie wasn't my type the way that Jordan is.

10/2

So Lily and I went out tonight. If you could call it that. It was supposed to be a nice evening out. Nice evening out resulted in Burger King and a pick up. But we talked. She's not quite as out there as I thought she was, but that still doesn't mean that I can see a long-term lasting relationship with her.

I'll never tell her this but the only reason why I finally asked her out was because Howard pointed out my sex life, or lack thereof since Maggie. Lily's a nice girl and there's no denying her attraction to me, why not take the offer. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

She's not want I want, but she'll do. It's enough to get Howard off my back about things, if he thinks I'm dating someone he feels better about me. So I'm here, dating someone that I don't see a relationship with simply because my shrink wanted me to date someone. How fun.

She really is a nice girl though, don't get me wrong. She's just not my type. She's not the kind of a person that I can see a relationship between us working out. We're just too different. I'm a man who's tried and true, if it worked before it'll work again, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and doubt the world until you know what the world will do.

She takes everything as it's presented to her, accepts the way the world works and is constantly optimistic. I hope for a better day but I don't count on it. She goes around thinking that each day is getting progressively better. I hope it'll be better but am not surprised when it comes out worse.

We're just too different to ever really work I suppose.

11/15

I don't quite know what happened over the past few days, it's all somewhat jumbled. Jordan, Lily, Nigel, too much going on to really comprehend. I think I finally screwed things over for good between Lily and myself, although I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. I mean, she was the one who was going to marry Nigel only to keep him in the country.

I stopped it only because it stops the morgue from sounding like another bad NBC show. There's one of those, I swear, on every NBC hit. Someone marrying someone just to keep them in the country. I blame that bad detective show with the guy who plays Bond for starting the trend. Will and Grace picked up on it, and I'm not having the morgue go down that path.

And then there was Jordan. I don't think I've ever been quite as afraid as I've been today, thinking that she might be dead. There was just some kind of gut fear, the only time I've felt like it was when I thought something had happened to Abby. It was just as strong as that. And it almost scares me to realize that I feel that strongly.

I mean, I know I fucked things over with Lily and all that I've done. I was pissed off about being passed over. I've met Jack Slokum once, and that was one time too many. He's a damn good doctor, but he's a horrible people person, totalitarian, strict, and that's not what this place needs.

This place needs someone to keep them in line, but still make it something that they enjoy doing. That's not what it would be if they gave Slokum the job. That's not what it would be if they passed me over. Slokum would lead to half the staff quitting rather than work under him, no one would want to work under that pompous asshole.

I know I wouldn't. I'd quit. I don't care if everyone would think it was only because I was jealous over getting passed up. I suppose I am, I mean, I've actually worked here, Slokum's been hobnobbing with the politicians, that's all he's good at. He's just as sleazy as all of them.

I don't care if he's more qualified. I know he's more qualified. But it doesn't mean he's better for the job. I'm better for the job and I know I'm better for the job. And I refuse to work for that pompous prick. And he'd be out the best ME here.

12/25

Bah. Humbug.

I don't know what possessed me to actually go back and spend Christmas with Maggie and Abby. I could have gone out with Lily, could have done something fun and different. Instead, I wound up doing the same tired thing. Christmas dinner with Maggie and Abby, gifts, the whole thing.

And Maggie's boyfriend. Talk about awkward. But what felt the most awkward was the way that Maggie acted as if nothing had ever happened. All the fighting, the divorce, as if all that had never happened. As if she knew that what's-his-face wasn't right for her and she wanted me back.

I'm not going to fall victim to it. I'm not. I can't. I don't want to. I'm not going to go back through all that again. I'm stronger than that. I don't love Maggie anymore. I have Lily; I don't need to go through all that shit again.

1/1

Happy new years to no one. It's the most useless holiday ever.

No point in it. Who really cares? Another day older and closer to death. Another day where we find ourselves a day older and not a penny richer. Scrooge was onto something, gotta hand it to old Ebenezer, he knew that money's about the only thing you can trust in the world.

It's always there; it's something that won't string you along. Any object. No object can have emotions and play you, make you think they love you when they really don't. No object can act one way and really be another just to annoy you.

Money's the best thing on the world. And I have too much of it. I love money, simply because it's easier than loving a human. I have nothing else to love.

1/28

So I almost lost my job. Through my own free will. I was going to throw it all away. I don't care really. I mean, it's not as if this is my first love. I wonder if I'm still too old to go out and join some band. It doesn't matter, I'm the drummer, and no one pays any attention to the drummers.

Yeah, I can see it now. Me, looking every bit the sleazy old man playing drums behind Britney Spears. I'd get laughed away from any auditions. I'm too damn old. I should never have given it up, I should have kept right on going with it, I should have just kept on running and playing. I have the skill. I don't doubt that. But I don't know if I could've handled the life of a rocker, living in a van for months on end through until now.

I couldn't handle I t then, I certainly couldn't now. I wonder if I made the right choice though. I could have had the world in my hand. I could have run off to Canada when my number got called, I didn't have to switch to premed just to get a deferment. But I had.

I switched to what my mother wanted me to do because I had no real other option. I t was win/win. I got out of the war; she got to see me become a doctor. I still wonder what life would have been like if I hadn't done that though, if I had stayed a music major. If I never went to college, if I ran off to Canada.

I wish I could do it over at times, go back and change everything, go back to being musician. I could have been something. But isn't that what all could've been rock stars say? Isn't that what all of them say as they down drink after drink, drug after drug? Yeah, I could've been something too.

A good glass of scotch sounds good right about now.

2/5

44 years old. Forty four years and nothing to show for it. A wasted life that I hate. A past that I try to forget. Parents that I hate. Too many failed relationships to count. That's all I have to show for forty-three finished years on this earth.

I'm almost to that midway point in my life and I feel no different than I did ten years ago. No different than I felt twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, I first realized my life sucked and decided not to do anything about it.

I want to go back and change things. I want to go back and do what I wanted, but it's over and done with. I've spent the better part of forty-three years regretting nearly everything that I've done in my life.

2/14

So if the writing's fucked, sue me. Five glasses of scotch do not good handwriting make. But it's valentines day. I've always hated the day. No point in it. Commercialization, that's all it is. I have no one to love. I've screwed over Lily for Maggie, and well, I never loved Maggie, I never did. She was there, I had her, but I don't love her. I can't, not after what she did to me.

There are times when all I want her to do is pack up, move, and leave me alone. But all she has to do is look at me and I melt. I don't love her though, I can't love her. I have Lily, I don't need her too. But I have her, against my will. She just forced her way into my life.

She just appeared one day and somehow wound her way into my bed, and now I'm stuck juggling the two when in reality I don't want either. The only enjoyment I'm getting out of them is the sex, but that's all it is. And both of them want a real relationship.

I have too many women. Not a problem most men complain about. Right, give me a pimp hat and zoot suit. Ol' Dirty G, master pimp at your service.

Valentines day sucks.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N Again, I tell you, if you're not a big fan of angst, don't read. This is entirely Garret feeling sorry for himself, angsting and wallowing in self pity while being drunk. This chapter (if you can call it that. It's more like chunk of entires) goes from Lost and Found to Cruel and Unusual...Again, I don't own garret, or any of the things that happen in canon...I just play with them, and give Garret his own take on things...

3/4

It's funny, how even though I'm back with Maggie, if you can call it that, I keep thinking about someone else. The entire time we were in the elevator the only thing I could think of was how I would love to do this entire thing with Jordan, how great it would be if it were someone else that wasn't Maggie.

It was so different, so daring. But every time I closed my eyes it wasn't the blond woman with me, it was dark hair and whiskey colored eyes. I would close my eyes and picture the woman on her knees before me, gently licking and nipping and sucking at me, picture what the look on her face would be one of contentedness, and one of want.

I kept thinking that the woman that I had pinned against the wall, stifling her moans with my mouth wasn't the bitchy blonde that I thought that I would be happy to get rid of, but the beautiful woman that I would be happy to have. I kept thinking about how sexy she would look, with me holding her up, her pants pulled down, her shirt pushed up and me thrusting into her.

It's enough to make me hard all over again. It's enough to make me want her now. To make me want to go and knock on that office across the hall and lay her out over her desk and have her, hard, passionately.

3/19

You never know blind fear until you think you've lost a child. You don't know what it's like to walk around with this pit in your stomach, afraid to call but yet wanting to call, just to find out.

I got the call to her school, I kept calling and calling and only got her voice mail. The only thing I could do was go through those doors with a pit in my stomach, looking at the body under the sheet praying that it wouldn't be my little girl underneath it, praying that everything was going to be fine.

I was afraid to go near it, afraid that I'd find blonde hair and blue eyes staring up at me, every bit the reflection of her mother. The only thing she inherited from me was my stubbornness.

But then she appeared, running towards me and all I could do was wrap her tightly in my arms. I never want to loose her. I have nothing left aside from my little girl. For all the trouble she puts me through, she's still my daughter.

I still love her, and no matter what I do to her, she loves me. It's just the way that parent child relationships work. I want to hate my father, I do, but I can't, no matter how hard I try, how much I think of what he did to me, I can't stop loving him. I can hate him, but I can't stop loving him.

I'd have nothing left without Abby. I'm almost afraid of her in college, she's already been accepted to Rider University, they're supposed to have an amazing business program. I never thought that she would be a business major, but she's good at it, she's got a knack for it, she could open up her own store.

But I've never felt more afraid in my life than right then, thinking that she could be gone. Somehow, I knew she wasn't though. You just know when someone close to you dies, and I never felt it with Abby, I never felt her gone, I knew she was still alive. It didn't mean that I wasn't afraid though.

4/10

I'm reminded yet again, of why I hated my father. How as much as I want to hate him that I can't. I love him, but I hate him. He's my father; I can't hate him just on sheer principal. I want to hate him but I can't.

Because I did the same thing that I wanted to hate him for. He ran off away from his family. He ran away from his whole life, he ran away from it all rather than stay and know that things would just go from bad to worse. He left rather than hurt us all more. He left to save us.

He still loved us. He told me that he left because he loves us. He told me that he left because he knew that we'd be better off without him. That we'd be better off without an alcoholic deadbeat good for nothing con artist.

But isn't that all I am? An alcoholic deadbeat good for nothing. That's all I am, I don't fault him for leaving though, not really. I don't fault him for leaving a cold as ice mother. I don't fault him for leaving me. But what got to me the most was that he gave me back the comic book. It was the same one, it had to be. He had hung onto it the whole time, he didn't sell it.

Something in me just tells me that he didn't sell it, that he had had it all this time that I just spent my whole life thinking that he had sold off my most prized possession when he hadn't. That's what got to me. I don't choke up easily, but that was it, that was what pushed me over the edge and actually got me to cry.

That and what Jordan gave me before. I still have that stethoscope in my drawer. She said that the day that I walked into her life was the most important day in her life, that I changed her life forever for the better. And it makes me think that I actually have a chance with her now because of it, that I might actually get somewhere with her that she just might love me that way.

But I don't know what to feel about my father anymore. I want to love him, I want to hate him, but mostly I'm neutral. I'm so in between love and hate that I just can't' feel anything, anything at all. I want to love him, I want to be like a normal kid who loves there father and I want to hate him for never being there.

Although I can see why he became a grifter. I can. I can see the enticement of it. It was kind of fun, really. There's definitely something about knowing that you're doing something that's not quite legal and getting money for it. There's something about knowing that you're tricking someone.

And I like that feeling. I know what I'll do if I ever give up this awful job. I can never make it in music, if I give this up, I'm going to become just like my father.

When I grow up, I wanna be just like my daddy.

5/18

She's gone. She walked right back out of my life. She wasn't even here a full year and she's run again. Off trying to find her mother's killer. And it leaves me here wishing that she were back. I'm empty; if there's any other word to describe how I feel, please tell me, but empty seems to be all I can come up with. I'm empty without her.

I've fucked things over more than I ever wanted to. Lily's gone, probably never coming back. That's all my fault too; I shouldn't have tried to juggle her and Maggie, it just wound up in all three of us getting hurt and me winding up going from too many women to none at all.

None. No Maggie. No Lily. No Jordan. But Jordan's the only one that seems to hurt. Lily doesn't hurt, Maggie doesn't hurt, Jordan hurts. Jordan's the one that got under my skin against my will. As much as I love and hate Maggie, I don't know how to describe what I feel for Jordan.

But she's gone again. I can't hire her back, not again. I can't call her back, not when she's so close to someone that has information. I don't blame her, really. I spent half a year trying to chase down my father when I hated the man, a full six months of being under the guise of touring with whatever band I was playing with at the time, really looking every single day for him. And never finding him.

When he came back, I wanted nothing more than to beat the shit out of him for all that he'd done. His constant in and out of my life, never staying long enough for me to get close, leaving mom and me to fend for ourselves, just narrowly staying fed and clothed and sheltered.

But I couldn't. The only thing I could think of to really hate him about was that damn comic. Which he gave back to me. I still can't believe he did that. Give it back to me, not sell it, the things worth at least 20k. But he just gave it back, or bought it, or whatever it was that he did with it. All I know is it's mine again.

But she's gone, she's chased down some wild lead that she can't let go of. She can't let go of her mother's murder, even her father has, but she can't. That's just not who she is.

6/10

There was some song Nigel was playing today that's just stuck out in my head. Something that amazes me because of the lyrics. All about a lover that you don't have to love. Someone who's there, someone who'll take you, a one-night stand and nothing else.

I want that, but I don't. I want her, most of all. I want her to come back and realize that I love her, I want her to come back to me and I want to have her in my life. I want her to realize that I'm the one for her and that she can love me forever.

Because I'll love her forever. I'll hold her close on long lonely nights. I'll give her the freedom that she wants; I know she doesn't like to be tied down. I'll give her everything that she wants, everything she needs just to have her.

I'm weak for her and I know it.

But I'll settle for a lover that I don't have to love. Just a random face in a random place that's someone who won't care that I love someone else. That I'm just looking for a quick screw. Wham bam thank you ma'am. That's what I want.

7/30

She's back, and I love it. I love having her near me. I thought that I had lost her forever, that she was never going to come back and she did. And I pulled strings to get her back. I have connections that I can manipulate like a puppet.

I had to give her another pay cut, at least on her official salary. It says on all the records that she only makes 38 grand a year, but I supplement that with another few grand out of my own pocket. I've got the extra money. It's not like I'm going to be spending any of the money that just sits collecting interest or sits invested in portfolios that I don't even look at.

I don't care about the money. It was important when I was young, when I had none, when I was with Maggie and all she could think about was money. But now that I have no point for it, there's no point in keeping it around. I have no use for it. Abby's college fund is well stocked.

I have hundreds of thousands of dollars; at least that's what my broker says. He keeps telling me that all my money is so well invested that if I were to sell out I'd be set for two lifetimes. I don't care if it is or isn't, the only people who care about that are the ones who are inheriting anything.

Jordan and Abby. They're the two that are getting most of my inheritance. All of it. Abby's getting most of it, Jordan's getting whatever I know Abby would have no use for. And I trust my car to Jordan much more than I trust it to Abby, I'd rather not see my baby wrecked. Either one. Abby's not the best driver in the world yet, she'd total that thing in a day.

I could never work a day in my life, but I don't really care. Work gives me something to do at the very least. I may not particularly like it that much, it may not be what I want to do, but it's something to drive me away from boredom, something to keep me doing something every day, get up go to work, hate work, go home, hate my life. Nice little daily routine there.

10/12

I have to do something to stop these thoughts running through my brain. Something, anything. Nothing works, really, no matter how hard I try, I can't get her out of my head, I keep trying to, but it doesn't work, nothing works to get her out of my head.

And ever since she grabbed my ass today, I just want her. I want to kiss her hard and drag her off to bed with me. Just the way that she did it, playful, fun, but with just a hint of something else, something more. Something that she flirted with but wouldn't want. She wouldn't want me.

Shy would she want me? She has Woody, anyone who can't see the chemistry between those two is blind. But since she came back, she's been taking up more and more of my mind and all I want to do is have her, have what Woody is going to get. I can see it between them, she's going to wind up with him, and I'm going to be the best friend who supports her in her relationship, she'll never know what I think.

God forbid she ever finds this. I think it might send her running. Or rather, me. I wouldn't make her leave Woody, I'd be the one to pack up and move, someplace far, far away from here where I'd never have to see her again, knowing that she knows how I feel and will never feel the same way about me.

I'd be the one to pack up and go someplace else. California was nice, but it's so close to where she's run to before, she's been there before, she could be there again. Washington or Oregon are nice, or so I hear, I never actually got to be there. Or maybe just really leave. Australia, Mexico, China, Siberia, someplace where I'll never have to see her again.

It's not like I'm ever going to have her, it's not like she's ever going to notice anything in me. I don't know what makes me seem so attractive-I know that when I walk in someplace there's always at least one woman there who by the end of the night I could take home with me, but I never saw why.

I'm not a good-looking man, I'm bald, and old, and wrinkled. I suppose I'm well built, I'm not fat, at least. And well, even she pointed out that I have a nice ass, But I'm nothing compared to some of the young men at the bars. I asked one woman who came up and started talking to me about it; she said that I just had "it". Whatever "it" is.

It's not even that I'm really self-confident. I mean, I'm not a total stare at the ground looser, but I hate large groups of people and having to make speeches, and I'm only really confident in myself when I'm cutting open a dead body. It's the only thing that I know I'm good at.

I fail at anything to do with other people. I'm just not that good of a social person, I'm not a natural born orator, I don't inspire confidence and motivation some others do. I'm just not made to be a people person.

10/13

God, I haven't woken up from a wet dream since I was a teenager. I haven't had a wet dream since I was sixteen. And yet, she was the cause of one.

She was here, in my house. The evening went fairly normally, like it usually does when she's over, talking, food, more talking, sitting on the couch drinking and watching the game until she's had enough and won't be able to drive home if she has another sip, or until the game is over, just talking and half watching the game.

Only this time rather than it ending as the patriots do some crazy play like usually, and her getting up and heading to the door, she looks up at me and then kisses me. Soft and smooth and yet at the same time pure liquid fire.

I part her lips with my tongue and we lean back into the couch, kissing deeply, passionately. My hand works its way up her shirt as the buttons on mine are quickly undone, leaving me only in my undershirt, which quickly gets untucked and thrown across the room.

I take off her shirt, and kiss my way down her breasts, stopping only to remove her bra and take one nipple into my mouth, gently sucking, catching it in my teeth, playing with it, listing to her gasp and moan in pleasure

I move to the other breast and she works me out of my pants, which are already too tight. Damn, I'm getting hard just thinking about my fantasy. She pushes me up off of her, only so that we can head into the bedroom, and we fall back onto the bed after I've pulled her pants and underwear off, leaving her bare to me.

I kiss and tease my way down her body, but she flips me over and takes me into her mouth, ripping my boxers off. Her tongue circles just the very tip as one hand comes out and wraps around the base, starting a rhythm to match the way that her tongue is gently licking and lapping at me before she pulls her hand back and takes me entirely into her mouth.

I'm down her throat and she's swallowing me, working her throat muscles around me, and one hand comes out to grab my balls, rolling them back and forth, playing with them, adding even more pleasure to everything and I can't take it anymore, I cum, hard.

God, I can't even write that without getting hard, without needing to do something about it. And I know that it's going to be almost the same fantasy when I put this away and do something about it, that I'm going to be lying back in bed thinking of her with only my right hand for solace. I need a girlfriend, I do. I need someone to help pass the lonely nights.

10/14

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the other day. I was going to die, and I could only think of two things. Abby and Jordan. But mostly Jordan. Mostly how I'd never get to tell her how I felt. And then when I was finally going to, she cut me off, she told me not to think that way that we were going to get through this.

But I was going to tell her. I had gotten the second word out and she cut me off, she cut me off stopping me from saying it. I think she knows. She has to know. The way she grabbed my ass told me that she knows that I love her and will do anything for her, that I'm hers to do with as she pleases.

I only thought about Abby and that I had two college funds set up for her, it didn't matter that I was going to die. I didn't care about that, I just wanted to tell her that she was going to be set for life, that she could be a trust fund baby and get away with it.

She's better off without me. I've never been a good father to her, I've never been there for her, I've never been anything for her except someone to scold her. Neither of us were great parents, but I was the worst. I was a horrible parent. I always swore I was never going to be like my father, yet I wound up even worse than he did.

I love Abby though, I really do. She's my daughter, and I love her for that, she's one of the best things to happen in my life, but I love her so much I want to just be out of her life and stop ruining it. I want her to go off to college and forget about me, just make something of herself.

That's what she needs to do. Go off and make something of herself and forget all about how horrible her father was at raising her.

10/16

It's another drunken night spent all alone with only a nice bottle of Johnny Walker to keep me company. And he's a good friend, let me tell you.

I hate it when I'm forced to stroll down memory lane. I hate it when I'm forced to look back on my life and what it had been, what it could have been, I don't want to think about that.

Because thinking about what happened in the past only makes me hate what I've become even more than I already do. It makes me loathe everything that I am now; it makes me hate who I've become.

I've become a weak pathetic little man who can't do anything for himself I gave up my one love because my mother wanted me to become a doctor. Because I was too chicken shit to go out there and fight, because I was afraid of loosing my poor sheltered life.

It's times like this where I want to just give in and go back to the weak little man that I was. The poor high school dropout n'er-do-well that was destined to spend the rest of his life on a street corner, or that guy in the club who constantly goes "I coulda been somebody" while drunk and on more substances than one can possibly count.

I want to just give up. I don't want to go back and think about Maggie. I don't want to think about how she had me whipped, about how she had driven me away from anything and I had been blind enough to let it happen. I had thought her love was all I needed.

And then I realized that she never loved me. I was just the one that she had. I was the one that she could live with, not the one she could never live without. I doubt she'll ever find that man. She's just not that type of woman. She wants it all in life, and she can't have it all, but she'll keep searching till she gets it.

She chews you up and spits you out, uses you only for her purposes, she hates not having her way and will throw a tantrum if she doesn't get it. And yet, I had been blind enough to fall in love with her. Blind enough to want to make things work. Blind enough to let our split affect my life.

In retrospect, I'm better off without her, she left me hollow, broken, but I miss her, damn it, I miss her, I don't want to miss her, I want to hate her for all the shit she put me through, but I still love her. There's still the part of me that's the wake little man that I had been, who wants her, so sure of herself, so beautiful, so proud to come in and rescue me again.

But I have Jordan to throw that want to now. I can pitch my desire to her. It's not good, it might be worse, but it gets my mind off of Maggie, gets my mind off the manipulative bimbo that I had been stupid enough to marry.

10/18

I give up on her, she's obviously Woody's, I can't put up with it anymore, I should leave, fire her, do something to keep her away from me, stop her from tormenting me, but part of me is happy to get whatever little interaction I can get, and wants her to stay. I can't take it anymore.

10/24

I've been looking through a lot of these. I suppose Stiles would be proud, I'm making some sort of discovery about myself. I've discovered when I'm drunk I absolutely loathe Maggie. When I'm sober I can't say the feelings entirely gone, but it's much weaker, not nearly as vindictive.

It's not an evil I want to kill her hate. It's more I want to spite her hate, prove that I don't need her in my life type thing. However, when I'm drunk, I can't' say that I haven't scared myself before.

Each time I get drunk I find myself a different man everything that I try to hide on a daily basis comes to the light, it's suddenly all there, pure unadulterated rage. But I suppose it's best to let it out that way, drinking my way through bottle after bottle of scotch because if I didn't, I don't know what I'd do, I certainly don't want to snap and wind up in some mental place.

I've heard Jordan's stories about the one her mother was in, it seems like a nice enough place, but I don't want to be there. I don't want to be someplace like where my mother was, a place like that would drive me even further to suicide, not away from it, it would make me angrier, not calmer.

I suppose I'm a haunted man, I'm haunted by what I was, haunted by the mistakes that I made. I can't say I really blame myself for being this way either, I mean someone should not have been through what I've gone through, I've gone through a lot, It's understandable for me to be just a little fucked up, right?

I'm not that bad, I'm not nearly as crazy as Jordan. Jordan without her problems just isn't the same, I could never picture her without her problems, they're just so much who she is, they're a part of her, something that I would never try to take away.

It's what I hate about Woody, he wants to take away her problems, make her forget about them and move on, act as if her mother's murder doesn't affect her. She can't do that though, I know she can't.

I don't want her to forget them; I don't want her to pretend she's accepted it and dealt with it. I just want her to be able to function, do her job without chasing down every little lead that has even the thousandth of a chance of being connected with a murder and risking her life. I want to see her happy and healthy.

More than anything, I want to see her in my arms. Wow, it's amazing, a drunken rant from me that hasn't been all about the anger and the hate. No, I think if anything, this one's about the hurt. The hurt of knowing that the woman that you love loves someone else.

Love. I've never used that word before to describe her, but I suppose it fits. Love is the only thing I think I can say I feel for her. It's the same thing I felt for Maggie, only stronger, it has to be love; I thought I loved Maggie, but this is different, this is more intense.

She's my best friend, but I love her, I want her.

10/30

Peter Winslow. The newest addition. Part of my past staring me in the face. I didn't want to hire him, not when I saw his record, but the boy was desperate, searching for something to get his feet back on the ground, and I had to hire him, I had been him once, many years ago. I had been the same scared boy who wanted only to make something of himself and save himself from being a complete and total fuck up.

I was a high school dropout. I willingly gave up my education thinking that I could make it as a drummer. I had gotten lucky, gotten back into college, managed to get into pre-med to get away from what I didn't want to do, managed to survive med school.

I had thought I had put that whole chapter of my life behind me, the entire two years of my life that are more hazy than I'd like them to be, two years of sex drugs and rock and roll, with heavy emphasis on the first two and not quite as much on the last, largely due to all the emphasis on the first two.

We had thought ourselves on top of the world. We had a van and a small trailer to lug our gear; we got our way onto some small tours, making our way across the country. I had been just like him when I had given it all up, scared, broken, wanting only to be something, be someone.

And I had all but forgotten about it. Until now, he's brought it back up in my mind, reminding me of what I had been, that my life wasn't always as perfect as it is now. That I had lived a life that I hide from everyone, no one knows it, no one who knows me now knows what I had been. I put all that behind me when I came back to college, I forgot about it, severed all ties with it, acted as if it never happened.

But I can't pretend anymore. Not with him there, reminding me of it. I want nothing more than to fire him, but he's done nothing wrong yet, he's been a model employee, he's done a good job, I just can't stand the fact that he reminds me of the life that I fought so hard to forget.

11/2

I don't know what it is that woman sees in me. I can barely remember how it was that I woke up with some woman next to me. The only thing I can remember was that it had been her name on my lips when I finally went over the edge. And that the woman next to me looked way too much like her for my own taste.

I had gone out and picked up the next best thing to her, something that I hated myself for doing. I had done it right after Maggie left, found whatever blonde bimbos I could, whatever woman reminded me of Maggie in any way shape or form, simply because they were the next best thing.

And now here was the next best thing to her, sleeping next to me. It had been her that I had been thinking about, her name that had come out of my throat as I went over the edge, I wanted nothing else but to think that I was with her, that I had her, but I don't have her, I'll never have her. I don't want her; she'll never go for me except out of pity.

11/9

I don't know what it is about Rene, but there's something about her that turns me on.

But it's something that I'm afraid to get involved with. She reminds me too much of Jordan. I'm afraid of only using her as someone to substitute, the same look, dark hair, those deep eyes, the same slight build.

They could pass as sisters, if they wanted to. And there's obviously something between us, there's no doubting that, something about the way that we interact, push each other's buttons.

But she's so much like Jordan. I can't get it out of my head when I'm with Rene that she's just another replacement for Jordan. That she's just like some of the other dark haired ones that I've picked up in bars searching for someone to be at least a temporary version of the woman that I really want.

All we did while we were in North Carolina was fight, bicker and purposely push each other's buttons, everyone I swear thought that we were either a couple madly in lust or an old married couple there was that much tension and passion between us. But I don't want to be passionate with her, I don't want her to be just another woman who I get to screw Jordan vicariously through, I want a woman who I can have a real relationship with.

Don't get me wrong, Rene is gorgeous, for someone who's nearly as old as me, she' looks good, she looks amazing. If it wasn't for the fact that she reminds me of Jordan, I'd go after her in an instant. But I don't want her to just be a replacement.

And I can't talk to Howard about this. I can't. I don't want him to know about Jordan, it makes it tall the more real. If I act as if I don't love her, keep telling myself that I don't love her; I might just trick myself into believing it. But telling someone else that I love her makes it real, makes me have to realize it, whether I want to or not.

And knowing him he'd try his damnedest to play matchmaker, drop subtle hints to her, or knowing him, not so subtle hints and tell her flat out that I would like nothing more than to drag her home and fuck her senseless.

Although that's only a small part of it. There's something about her that makes me feel safe, makes me feel whole. I never felt that way with Maggie, and I just want to feel like that forever. I want to have her in my life forever, and don't want to let her go. The sex is just a nice bonus, but I feel complete already just having her by me, I don't need to have her that way too to have what I want.

11/12

It's not often it's something that the victim has that gets me thinking about my past life, about what happened between what I had been and what I am, and how much I've changed.

But a kid cam through here today, still had his book son him, kept all his notes in his back pocket, and I was searching through them, trying to find a name when I cam across something. It was an essay he had written for school and had something on there, the topic got me to thinking. Thinking about what I had been.

He has said that two characters in some book obviously still loved each other, or at least cared because they would throw silverware drawers at each other, they still has passion, they still cared enough to have passion, but eventually that passion just fizzled and died, leaving them both alone.

And well, I suppose that's what happened between Maggie and I. We had such wonderful passion, we had the most amazing lustful relationship, and then all of a sudden, it faded, died right away. And then we started fighting, the passion was back, if in a negative way.

And then I just gave up. Stopped caring. I didn't care enough to push my own limits and come as close I as ever could to abusing her, screaming at her, slamming my fist into the wall way too close than I would have liked.

It's funny, there's a hole in the wall where I punched clear through it during a fight. There's a picture up there to cover it, she never did get it plastered over. Just hung a picture on it. I had sunken down into the bottom of a pit, same way I've done before.

My life just spirals downwards, not upwards. I keep falling down into deeper despair and climbing up every now and then only to fall back down deeper. I had been drinking too much and I guess it was that angry side of me that I keep so finely in check coming out. I would never hit her, I could never hit her, but that didn't stop me from punching through walls.

I didn't have it in me to actually hit her, I was too afraid to. I was afraid of what she'd do in return. I'm a bastard. I know I am. I'm a self-loathing bastard; I don't need Howard to tell me that, I know it for myself. I'm a self-loathing bastard who sits here on lonely nights and drinks myself into a stupor while writing about how much of a self-loathing bastard I am.

I don't know whether or not to call myself an alcoholic or not. I mean, I know I'll never set foot inside an AA meeting, but I'm not in denial. I know I drink more than I ought to, I know I've done more things in my life than I ought to have ingested, but I really don't give a damn. I almost want to be a full out drunk, living only from drink to drink, not caring about anything in between.

It seems so much simpler to live like that, in that constant dull state, nothing to worry about silly little things like work or love. You don't feel, you get rid of all the feeling. I'd love to be like that, just completely empty of all feeling. I want to become completely apathetic. It saves you so much heartache.

11/25

Thanksgiving has no point when you're alone. I spent it working. Saw a wannabe-cook flambé and that's about it. Another boring day that passed by without event.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N Sorry this took so long to get to you. Blame it on Gmail eating attachments between myself and my beta. And a slashy garret taking over...

* * *

12/24

It's funny, as much as I hate every minute of it, I can't help but think I'm falling for Rene. I mean, there's something about her that makes me want to think that I can love her, but part of me keeps telling me that the only reason why I feel anything at all for her is because she's so much like Jordan.

Part of me keeps reminding me that I only want Jordan. So yeah, if there really is a Santa Claus, he knows what I want to wake up to find beneath my nonexistent Christmas tree.

When you live alone you have no point for that. I remember when picking out a tree used to be the big thing. Maggie, Abby and I would go off and pick out the best tree in the farm, get it and take it home, and the three of us would spend the rest of the night decorating it. Right there on the twenty fourth. And we'd go to midnight mass and come back with Abby sound asleep, and Maggie and I would lay out the gifts, ready for Christmas day for her to come down the stairs with that gleam in her eye.

I never went to church either, except for midnight mass every year. I've given up entirely on religion, on faith in general. There's only so much faith one can have. They say that faith can move mountains, that if you wish for something long enough and hard enough that if you believe in it, it'll come true.

I've wished for one thing in my life to go right, I've believed in the chance of actually having a real relationship with her, and I haven't gotten it, she just keeps drawing closer and closer to Woody, leaving me all alone. The more I want it the further and further away it goes.

But I don't blame scrooge. I can see where the man's coming from. Bah, humbug.

1/19

I hate myself. I hate myself for allowing myself to fall for Rene. I'm in something with her, I don't think its love, I honestly don't. It doesn't even come close to what I felt for Maggie, but it's something. And I want to make this right, make it work.

I want to prove that I can have at least one real relationship, that I can do something right with my life.

Prove myself to the world. Peter was griping today about no one seeming to understand him, if only he knew how well I did. He wonders why he seems to constantly be on the outskirts and I know why, I keep forcing him there, I keep him there, far away from me.

If he gets too close to me, he reminds me of what I was. He even looks vaguely like I had all those years ago. He was me; he was everything I had been. He was my nightmares stepping out of my head and becoming reality, the life that I've hid from everyone for thirty years coming back out to bite me.

And I have my chance now to prove myself, prove that I'm no longer that same weak man. Actually take control of something in my life and have a real relationship. I'm going to make things work between myself and Rene, I have to.

I don't care if she's a replacement for Jordan, she's what I have and I'm going to make it work, I'm going to make things work out between us, no matter what. They have to work out between us.

1/30

I think Rene knows, at least somewhat, that she's not the first one in my heart. I don't think she knows that Jordan's the one who has my heart, that she's just the next best thing. I think she still thinks Maggie has it. But I don't know, she and Jordan don't get along, all they ever do is fight.

She may think its Jordan; it may just be intuition that has her hackles raised and ready to fight, wanting to fight her off for me.

Nice thing to think about, but I don't that's it, why would anyone want to fight about me, fight over me?

2/12

Wow, it does surprise me somewhat to read through this for the first time completely sober. Every other time, I've only broken this out and wrote while at various states of drunkenness, and it's amazing to see this side of me, I hide it even from myself.

There's a reason I drink alone, it's not because I'm not a social person, although I do prefer solitude, it's because I'm afraid of what I'm going to unleash. I'm afraid of what kind of man I'm going to be once I'm let out of my cage, freed from the bars by the alcohol.

I'm afraid of being the angry man that I am in public, I'm afraid of things getting out of control.

But most of all, I'm afraid of her seeing what I'm really like. It's hard enough getting her to like me, trying to come up with something good for her to see in me, but if she knew what I was really like, what I hid behind a carefully constructed facade she would hate me.

Everyone would hate me once the realized what I really was. What I really am. I'm a monster on the inside, there's no other way to describe it. But I hide it all, I keep my wall of calm stoicness up, I only let it down while here, all alone, sitting with some good jazz playing and a nice bottle of scotch to curl up to.

2/14

Another valentine's day gone. Rene and I went out to dinner, I bought her a card, we screwed. There's nothing really passionate about our relationship except for the hate, we both hate each other for what we are, I think its equal parts self-loathing too, we're so alike, we're too alike. And she's too much like Jordan. I can't love her, she's just like Jordan.

It takes every ounce of will not to scream out Jordan's name when we're in bed together. She's all I can think about. And Rene already knows that there is definitely something else up with me, that I do care for Jordan in a different way. I don't need to confirm it by screaming her name.

But what I wouldn't give to just have her once. To feel her beneath me, to gently and slowly thrust in and out of her. To taste her lips on mine. To kiss my way down that perfect neck to those perfect breasts. There's no other way to describe her but perfect. Tangle my hands in her chestnut curls as she gently makes love to me with her mouth.

Makes love, there's a term that I don't use often. There's no love in it most of the time. Sex is sex. Fucking is hard sex. But it's all sex.

Until you love someone. And I've given up trying to fight it, I know I love her; I'm not going to even try and fight it anymore. Just accept it and hide it.

But that's what it'd be. Making love, because I love her. It's just she'll never love me; she'll never ever reciprocate what I feel. Who would ever want to love the dirty old man that I am?

3/18

I don't know why I do it to myself. I love Rene, I think I do at least. I don't know what to feel anymore. I just don't want to feel feelings lead to hurt.

What's that damn quote from the Star Wars movie? Love leads to fear of loss. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Or something like that. All I know is it boils down to love leading to the dark side. And I can see why.

I don't want to love Rene, I know that she's nothing more than a cheap replacement, that I should be valuing her as something more, that I shouldn't be loving her because she's close enough to trick my mind into thinking I have the one I want. But I do.

I don't want her to leave my life, because it would mean loosing the "Jordan" that I have. I'm scared of her leaving; I want things to work, because if things work with Rene, they're working with Jordan in some sick twisted way.

I'm afraid of loosing her and I'm angry about it. I guess Yoda was right, gotta hand it to the ancient green guy. He knew what he was talking about. I hate myself for loving her, I hate myself for loving either of them, I hate myself for letting myself care, and I suffer for it.

But I don't know if I love Rene. I like to think I do, it makes me think I'm still capable of loving, but I still have this voice in my head telling me that I really don't care about her, that I don't love her, that I'll never love her, that she's only someone to fill in, a stand in for the one that I really love.

I want to love Rene. It proves that I can still love, it proves that I'm not entirely cold and heartless, that somewhere deep inside of me I still feel. I doubt myself sometimes, doubt the ability to feel. I doubt the fact that there is actually a heart inside of me.

I know this much, if there is one inside of me, it's smaller than the Grinch's. Mine's at least four sizes too small. The only one who I seem capable of caring about is Jordan; I don't want to care about anyone else.

And Abby, but I don't know how much of that is biological. Sheer paternal biology telling me to love her. I do, I really do, but there are times when I doubt even my love for her, she's my daughter and I can't tell if I love her or not sometimes.

3/30

So I wound up surfing the web in a fit of boredom today. Remind me to never do that again. The amount of teenage attention whores out there is insane. Al these kids who talk about how life is hell without knowing it.

How are they to know how much life is hell? They haven't lived enough to feel it, really bad. None of them has the right to claim that their life is horrible, not until you've lived through horrible, not until you've lived through everything that could go wrong going wrong in your life.

A good for nothing chickenshit father running out when the going got tough. Having to put up with an icy bitch for a mother, who never seemed to really be able to care, never seemed able to love, who only wanted to see me become something. Bouncing from place to place one-half step faster than an eviction notice.

Spending two years of a life strung out on any and all substances that came your way, claiming you were a musician when really all you were was one stoned person who was trying to play drums onstage but not doing a good job of it.

Going to college and switching to what your mother wanted you to do simply because you were too damn afraid of your horrible life ending. Loosing your best friend in a war that you were too chicken to fight in.

That's hell. That's a horrible life. You can't say your life sucks until you do all that. You can't claim you're suicidal because your boyfriend broke up with you and you failed a math test. That's nothing. That's crappy teenage angst, been there, done that.

It's funny, that always seems to be one topic Howard and I avoid whenever he gets the urge to talk to me. He's never once asked me about depression, about suicide, about what I thought about it. You'd think he'd ask, after all I only see at least one a week. But he never has, he's always kept away from it.

Not to say that I haven't. Everyone has days like that though, right? Where all you want to do is drink yourself into death, give up caring about everything, give up thinking, feeling, everything. Just leave this world behind.

But I'm too chicken too. I'm so afraid that I'm afraid of killing myself. Talk about irony. I couldn't do it; I couldn't do it and know that people would hurt over me. I couldn't do it knowing that I'd be hurting her; I couldn't do it knowing that the morgue would go to shit without me.

I could never hurt her; I want to be the one that she turns to. I want her to forget about Woody, I would like nothing else but to see the detective gone from her life. I want nothing more than to see him gone.

I'd kill him myself if it didn't mean that she'd hurt. She'd hurt for him, and I couldn't do it because of that. I want to see her happy, not sad. I want to kill him to allow me to make her happy, but she couldn't be happy if he was murdered. I can cover my tracks well, but she'd be the one who wanted to be involved only to get to the bottom of it.

And she'd be able to trace it back to me. She'd be able to get it back to me, and that would leave me nowhere, that would leave me worse than where I am now because it would shatter all her trust in me, shatter what she thinks of me.

And I don't want that. More than anything, I don't want that. I want to still be there to be the one for her to lean on. When he leaves, she's going to lean on me. And I'm going to be more than willing to be her crying shoulder. I wish I could come up with a way to convince the boy to leave, leave her, leave this, leave everything and make her hurt so that I'm her knight in shining armor.

4/15

She called me St. Jude today. The patron saint of lost causes. I'm the patron saint of myself then, I'm a lost cause and I know it, I've given up trying to fight it, I just accept it for what it is, I know I'm gone, lost hopeless, in love with the one woman I can never have.

I hired Peter because he was a lost cause, because part of my brain was telling me I had to, that I should because of what I had been, that I couldn't fault the boy, it would be the pot calling the kettle black, and I was above that, I had put my own past behind me, that he could too.

Only thing is that he couldn't. He couldn't put his past behind him and it's come up to bite him in the ass. His wife, ex wife, whatever she is, rolled through the morgue and it sent him right back onto his old path. Once I was through I was through, I never relapsed once, never.

But now that he has, it's gotten me thinking. I want to. I want to remember how it feels, to forget everything around you. Forget the pain, forget the hurt, forget the stress and the worry. The scotch is good but there are times where it's not enough, that no matter how much you want to drink, it's never enough.

Thinking about it is all but making my mouth water. I haven't thought about it in such a long time, every time I thought about what I had been it was simply to realize how horrible of a person I've been. And this is just another thing, another notch on the list, one more thing that proves that I'm horrible.

I've been clean for almost thirty years. Gave up being on the road and everything else along with it. Everything except drinking. I couldn't handle life if I didn't even have my scotch to help me cope. I need something left. I broke all ties with the life I had lead, gone to college, made something of myself.

But now, all I can think of is how great that feeling was. That thirty years is a long time to go without feeling that good, that it wouldn't hurt to give it one more go around, that I was stronger now than I was then and wasn't going to allow myself to get hooked.

Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to just throw in the towel and live the rest of my life in that wonderful drug induced bliss, forgetting that a world exists outside of booze and drugs. I have plenty of money to support me like that for the rest of my life.

A six-figure salary, even if I lost it, I still have enough in the bank to live comfortably for the next twenty years. Twenty years that could be spent in a wonderfully hazy mist, forgetting that there is a world beyond my own mind. I want something, I need something. I need something to make me hate Peter less. I need her.

4/23

I came so close to finally getting my wish. The boy nearly left. Nearly. Unfortunately, he didn't. She dragged him back. And I want to hate her for it. But I can't hate her; I love her too much to hate her. I can't hate her, but I can hate him.

I can hate him for being so damn likeable. He's so cute and cuddly, like a little puppy. Everyone just wants to mother him, and Jordan's no exception, she's fallen for his detestable charm. She's fallen for the deep blue eyes and cute spiky hair. He's everything that I'm not.

It just further proves that I'm not what she wants. She went all the way across the country to drag him back. She went all the way across the country just to get him to come back, to get him not to take a job in California, because she wanted him here. She can try and downplay everything all she wants, but she loves him, even if she won't admit it to herself.

She has the same look when she looks at him that I know I have when I look at her. Wistful longing. Only I know that mine is tinged with more pain than hers. I know I have no chance with her. Tell that to my heart. I know I'll never have her, yet I still love her.

I have Rene though. We went for dinner and drank too much and wound up fighting. In that harsh whisper that you use in public, when you're in the middle of a fight but don't want to draw attention to yourselves. I didn't care. I didn't. I would have started screaming with her right there, in the middle of some restaurant that she dragged me to.

She's the perfect combination between Maggie and Jordan. The worst of both. She's got Maggie's detestable personality, but almost the same look as Jordan. Looks enough like Jordan to make me want her, but she's got Maggie's same catty personality to push me away. Yet there's glimmers of Jordan in there too, the stubbornness, the way that once she latches onto an idea she refuses to let it go. That's something that's so Jordan.

It's all I can do to remember who it is that I'm with, not to let my mind wander when we're in bed, I don't want to call her Jordan. They hate each other enough already, I don't need to give Rene another reason to hate her, technically she's my boss and technically she can get Jordan removed, and I wouldn't put it past her to do it as revenge. Honestly, I wouldn't.

But we fought, fought about how "emotionally distant" I am and if I want to make things work between us I have to do something for the relationship too. She hasn't done anything. I want to make things work, I do, I want to prove that I'm actually capable of having a relationship, and I called her on the way that she's every bit as distant as I am.

She didn't like that either. Hence the screaming. Or near screaming. It didn't help that she was one her third glass of wine and I was on my third scotch. The good news is we could both write this off as a drunken thing, the bad news is that we can both write this up as a drunken thing.

As much as I want to make things work, I don't care if they go sour between us. I want to make things work, but I could care less if they really do. I want to love her, but I don't know if I do, I think I do, but then there are times when I don't, when I think that things are just horrible between us.

I just wish that the boy would leave, I could call it quits with Rene, and finally move in on what I really want, love her the way I want to, try and work my way in, get her to love me. Hopefully. But I've given up on hope; it's something that just tricks you. I don't hope for anything anymore.

5/1

Rene made me chose between her and Jordan. Or try to at least. I didn't fall for it, I wouldn't fall for it. I think Rene knows who I'd pick, I think she knows where my feelings lie. She may pretend like she doesn't, but I can see it when the three of us are forced into a room together, the venom that she shoots at Jordan.

She hates her, with good reason, I suppose. I suppose she can sense the fact that she's just a cheap replacement for Jordan, that she's just the next best thing that I don't really love her, not the same way I love Jordan. That she's nothing but a cheap thing that I can trick myself into believing is what I want.

And Jordan's off chasing some lead on her mother, and it's driving me nuts. She hasn't come back in, hasn't called, hasn't done anything. And I'm stuck here all alone trying to think about what to do. I mean, I don't want to start freaking out and have her laugh at me for being worried.

But she's my last anchor left in the world, she's the last thing I have left. She's the one person I have left that I can really turn to. I can't turn to Abby, I don't need to burden her with my problems, she has enough of her own, Rene's figured out that I don't really love her, that as much as I want to make things work, she's number two to me. I have no one left to turn to if I loose Jordan.

I don't want to have to choose between them. Rene should know that I have no chance with Jordan, that she's just what I pine away for even though I know I'll never have her, she has Woody, she doesn't need me, she wouldn't want me.

5/2

I don't know what to feel about her. I'm just sitting here getting drunk, as per usual. I've never been quite as panicked as when she collapsed in my arms, she staggered out from some alleyway, saying she had no clue what happened and then just collapsed.

I tried to downplay my fear as much as possible, but I'm sure some of it showed through. The only thing I've ever felt like it was when I thought something had happened to Abby. But this was every bit as intense as that, I felt every bit as panicked.

If I lost her, I'd be lost, I'd be hopelessly and pathetically lost without her, she's the one that I lean on. But she'll never know that I love her. As much as I want to tell her, as much as I want to make a move on her, I'm not that evil.

I wouldn't dare make her choose between Woody and myself. I couldn't. It'd hurt her too much to make that choice. Instead, I stay in her life as her best friend, her mentor, her boss, the one that she turns to whenever something goes wrong and act as if it doesn't matter to me that she looks at every other man in Boston except for me.

But when she told me that Woody was the only one left that she could trust, I couldn't help the pain that I felt. I played it off with a joke and I think she realized her faux pas and apologized, but it didn't mean it didn't hurt. It still hurt. A lot. More than I wanted it to.

But I wanted to be that person, the last one left for her to trust. Woody did it though, this time, he betrayed her trust. This may be what I want more than anything; this may be my chance to step in and be the hero, saving her from everything. This may be my chance to be her knight in shining armor.

I can jump in and help her, be the one who won't betray her trust, won't betray her confidence, who'll help her. As much as I hate the random leads she follows, as much as I hate how involved she gets, I've learned long ago not to stop her, that trying to stop her will only lead to her sneaking around behind my back on the whole matter.

And I'd rather know where she is and send someone along with her than not have any clue where she is, only that she's out there risking death, only that she's out there and could be dying over some harebrained idea that she has and driving me half to death with worry because I want nothing more than to make sure that she's OK.

I can't show my panic though, I can't. Showing it would show that I feel for her, that I care for her, that I care more deeply than I show. And she'll catch on, she's too bright not to, and I don't want her to figure it out. I know her, she'll feel as if she has to choose between Woody and I, and I know I'm going to be the one who gets the "I value your friendship, but I love someone else" speech.

And I don't want to be the recipient of that speech. So I pretend to only care as a friend, pretend that I don't care about who she's dating, so long as she's happy. Act as if she and Woody work great together, act as if all is well in the world.

But really, I'm here drinking alone every night because I love her but she'll never love me. And I think Rene knows that we're through, I think Rene knows by now that we're not meant to be, that we're never going to work, she keeps being on the verge of just saying that we're through, and I honestly don't care if she does or doesn't.

5/9

I came so close to actually kissing her. I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I almost did. Almost. But she turned ever so slightly, I knew that she didn't want it and diverted it to a quick peck on the cheek that left me wanting more.

I wanted to kiss her, press my lips against hers. Do what's played out in my dreams for once, for real. I hate the dreams, I hate feeling like a teenager again, waking up hard, having to actually break out the porn.

Don't act surprised, really. I can't allow myself to loose myself in that fantasy when I'm with Rene, because I know I'll scream her name, that it would be the last straw in my relationship with Rene. And I don't want to screw things up that badly between us. I want to try and make things work.

It's bad enough that when I dream at her I think I murmur her name. I think that's how Rene knows that I really love Jordan over her; I think I've probably reached out for Jordan in my sleep but only got her instead.

I really do care for Rene, I want things to work between us, but I love Jordan more, I just do. I can't help it, I've given up trying to fight it, it's just something that I accept. It's just part of my life. The same way that scotch is, the same way that I get up every single morning and do the same things is, it's just part of my life, and I'd be lost without it, it's become so much part of my routine to love her, I could never adjust to loosing her.

The damn case got under my skin though. The boy kept trying to play me, kept trying to trip me up. It was a little unsettling the way the boy seemed to be drawn to me. The worst thing was I can see part of myself in him, there's something about him that makes me relate.

He's let everything that I keep boiling under the surface out. He's just the same as me, only he's crossed the fine line into insanity. A line that I threaten far too often, a line that I wonder if I've crossed at times.

There's this scary side of me that I saw in him. The anger that lurks just behind the surface. I keep it well hidden when I'm sober, I forget it's there except for the occasional rare moment when it shows through, but when I'm drunk, it all comes pouring out of me, all the rage, all the hate.

He murdered someone in cold blood just because he could, just to see if he could get away with it, and he nearly did. And I can't say I haven't considered it, just to see if I could get away with it. Just to see what it feels like to take another human life. The power to play god.

I had that power once; there was a reason why I didn't take up regular medicine. I was going to be an ER doc, but halfway through my internship I realized that every single patient that came through I wanted to see what would happen if I tried this, or tried that, played god with them, used them as my own guinea pig. I wanted to try things with them.

And it scared me enough to force me away from the living. It scared me enough to make me change my internship, start from scratch as an ME, I couldn't handle it as a regular doc, I wasn't going to kill someone just because I wanted to know what it was like.

I suppose that's the border between sanity and insanity. I never acted on what I wanted, he did. He was crazy, I'm still sane. Or I suppose sane as I can be. I mean, I've wanted to kill people before, but never did. I can't count the times homicidal thoughts crossed through my brain for Maggie. But she's still alive.

I couldn't even punch her much less murder her. Although I don't know, it seems as if killing her would be easier than hurting her. I could never bring myself to hit a woman, but there are times where it's taken all my self control not to do something extreme. Shoot her, drown her, poison her, do something extreme. Get rid of her.

Never could, never will though. I could never get away with it, Jordan wouldn't let me. Not Maggie. Not Woody, not Rene. She'd cover for me if it were something that happened, a random accident that wasn't me snapping and going off the deep end, she would cover for me, pronounce it an accident, and send the cops on a wild goose chase.

I could get rid of Woody though and have it look like an accident. Accidentally run him over while speeding and he's trying to get in the car to tail a suspect. Accidentally encourage some criminal to shoot me but duck behind Woody at the last second. Oops, too bad.

But no, instead, I'm cursed with sanity. I can't do it; it preys on my mind though. Thinking about what it would be like, ever since the stupid boy put it into my head that there might just be such a thing as the perfect murder. There is no such thing as the perfect murder though. The perfect cover up, yes, but not the perfect murder.

5/19

I think things are over between us. I told her to just jump in with both feet, and I don't think she wants to. I don't know what she wants, I don't know if she wants this or if she doesn't.

I just want to prove that I can have a relationship. My head's telling me I'm a fool if I don't love her, that I'm an asshole if I don't spring on the opportunity that's been presented to me. But then again, I thought the same thing about Lily.

My heart doesn't want her. My heart doesn't want to love her as much as my brain is telling me that I should love her. I just don't want to go through with it. I don't want to go through her constantly being on edge about how I feel for Jordan. I think she knows, she has to know.

She can't not know how I feel, I've all but told her. She can't miss the glances, she can't miss the way that she's so similar to Jordan, she has to know she's just the next best thing. She has to know that I don't love her, that I'll never love her. Not the way that I love Jordan. She has to know it.

She accused me of it too; she accused me of my relationship with Jordan. I wish there was something there for it to be founded on, but there's sadly not. I wish that she actually had something to accuse me of.

She accused me of getting involved in Jordan's jury duty, I wouldn't. I'd do anything for Jordan, but that's not my ground to interfere, as much as she wanted me to. I nearly caved to her wants, but I didn't. I'm strong enough to resist on that.

If she had offered me something, in return I would have offered her anything that she wanted. Not even necessarily sexual, just an agreement to at least give us a try, give a real relationship a try. I don't want to sound like a sleazy old man, I'm not. Not really. I don't think so.

But Rene has to know about what I think of Jordan now, she has to know that I love her, that she's second string. I want to love her, but I can't, there's just not enough room to love her for anything else than what she is to me, the next best thing.

I tried to stop myself from getting involved with her for that reason; it would have been easier for both of us. I wouldn't spend nights wondering how I felt about her, if it was love or not.


End file.
